Of Pirates and Plottings
by Mariagoner
Summary: Even someone stuck in the margins of a fairy tale can spin an interesting story. Vaan X Penelo X Larsa. Well, somewhat. Part of the Uses of Enchantment Series.
1. Chapter 1

...Remember when I said that I thought I'd have **The Uses of Enchantment **series all wrapped up by the end of August? ...I'm starting to think I very much overestimated my capacity.

And this is either the best (unlikely) or worst (all too probable) thing I've ever written. But in any case, this _is _the most ambitious story I've attempted for the series. Because it has a plot! And spans fours years! And has a narrator who I've never attempted to extensively write either! And though I don't think this fic is any good, I'm going to do my best to trudge towards an ending for it anyway.

In any case, this is for the wonderfully supportive **Artemischan **(for our long-lost fic exchange!) and for **Threewalls **(because she's doing a bang-up job helping me plot out this monster!) And as always, comments and questions are very much appreciated... especially since I'd love to know what is and isn't working within this sprawling monster of a peace...

* * *

**Title: Of Pirates and Plottings (Part 1/?)**

**Fandom: Final Fantasy XII**

**Series: The Uses of Enchantment**

**Characters/Pairings: Vaan, Larsa/Penelo, Larsa/Penelo/Vaan (Despite all of Vaan's protests to the contrary!)**

**Summary: Even someone stuck in the margins of a fairy tale can spin an interesting story.**

* * *

The first time Vaan saw it, he blinked and wondered if maybe he had taken too much sun.

* * *

The second time he saw it, he just closed his eyes and opened them again and wondered if it really meant something after all.

* * *

And the third time he saw it, all he could do was stop himself from falling down on his ass in front of them and think: _My partner somehow managed to get the Emperor of Archadia to fall in love with her. Now what the hell should I be doing?_

* * *

As far as Vaan was concerned, he had always been one of the untold sages of Dalmasca, humble and unrivaled in his ability to speak truths that lesser men always ended up trembling at… even if it was usually from laughter. Because as far as he had been able to tell, all his life he'd been telling the truth about things nobody had ever even guessed at until he was vindicated by whatever forces ruled the world.

He had always been right, for example, about his future greatness as sky piracy-- no matter how twitchy Penelo when get when she reminded him just how much of a help she'd been on the way to making him a _Dread_ Pirate (as opposed to just a slightly dismaying one) properly. He had been right about what would happen if Reks went off to war, despite how much his brother had scoffed at him and told him that being under the command of _the_ Captain Basch fon Ronsenburg would keep him safe after all. He had been right _waaay_ ahead of time about breaking into the Dalmascan palace, about helping a certain mini-skirted and menacing lady, and about the fact that the Viera would be even hotter _and_ bitchier in their native village than anywhere they ended up in the world.

Still, for all his acuity, for all of his unheralded greatness in predicting the future in ways nobody else he knew could rival, even he had been taken aback the first time he realized that the Emperor of Archadia was in love with his partner... and that said partner was more interested in said Emperor's advances than even she herself realized immediately.

* * *

In the end, what tipped him off about Larsa's feeling was obvious to the point of being a little ridiculous.

Vaan had officially been on the verge of being something other than a snot-nosed pirating kid when he first noticed it, which had put Penelo in at about eighteen and the royal swain in question at four years younger. (And though Vaan hadn't been madly in love with anybody when he was fourteen… well, Balthier always did say they grew them up fast in Archades for a reason.)

It had happened in, of all places, on the Phon Coast, during a much needed vacation he and his partner had taken in the aftermath of a trip to a few crumbling ruins in Rozarria that had garnered them half a million gil in loot, the ire of the entire Margrace clan, the amused attention of a certain Al-Cid… and a price on their head that had made the ears of every bounty hunter within the span of a few hundred miles prick up eagerly.

In light of all that, it had just seemed good common sense to both Penelo and Vaan to scramble their way back to a nice, sunny spot in Archadia, where being the friend of His Imperial Majesty himself tended to ward the smartest of the bounty hunters off until they could find a way to lower the prices of their skulls. And given all the racket they had made on their way there (after all, it _was_ pretty difficult to out fly a couple dozen other ships intent on _harpooning_ you to death quietly), it was only expected that their old (in a matter of speaking) friend would come to the coast as well to visit them and see what could be done to save their skins.

But somehow… that day had been the first day that Vaan had realized that something other than mere friendship had made Larsa come down to visit them with a troop of his best diplomats to wrangle out some way for them to stop pissing off the blue blood wankers of the western states.

Somehow, that hour had been the first that Vaan had realized that it hadn't been just camaraderie that had made Larsa promise any and all possible help towards them and the lady sky pirate among them especially.

And somehow, that moment had been the first that had made Vaan certain that it wasn't just kindness that had made Larsa spirit Penelo away after all the diplomatic yapping had been finished and over, only to return back with his face red and his hair wet and his fingers curled around her wrists possessively.

In hindsight, the fact that the Emperor of all of Northern Ivalice was in love with a girl who once danced through the streets of Rabanastre for stray gil was pretty stunningly obvious. Really, Vaan had to admit that the most surprising thing about the whole revelation was that it had taken him so very long to figure it out.

But even that would have probably meant nothing but an easy way to get their rears out of trouble in the future if his pirating partner hadn't always been such a hopeless romantic.

And in the end, what had tipped him off about Penelo was the shy, charmed smile she always had on her face when Larsa so much as looked or touched or talked to her… half an instant before she realized that she wasn't I supposed /I to feel this way about someone of _his_ means.

Penelo, Vaan knew all too well, always did have a way of protesting too much about just this sort of thing.

* * *

"You think he's got maybe kind of a crush on you?" he asked Penelo soon after that, after he finally realized that it hadn't been a one-time fluke and after they finished with another visit to Archades that had left his partner apparently flushed and smiling for a few hours straight. "Because I know we're his friends and all but even I think that him letting us stay over anytime we want to and trying to distract me with the palace guards while he whisks you off elsewhere is a bit, um..."

If Penelo's cheeks had been pink before, they were about the shade and consistency of the Rogue Tomato's skin now. "Vaan, are you out of your treasure-loving skull? He's just a friend to us. To the _both_ of us right here. If he wants to be nice to us because he's got a lot and we've got much less, what's the big deal?"

Vaan just snorted. "There's a difference between being friendly, Pen, and being _friendly_. And somehow, I don't think you should blame me if I get suspicious about the way he always chucks star fruit at me to keep me from following you two around either."

She rolled her eyeballs back at him in classic Penelo style-- one hand still stirring a pot of food while her head snapped back and forth like a bobble doll's. "Gee, Vaan, paranoid much? He's got about as much a crush on me as he does on… on you, honestly speaking. He's about as likely to hit on me as he is to invite us both to a threesome. "

For a minute, Vaan could almost _feel_ his balls protectively retreating into his body. "Ugh, Penlo, _ugh_! Don't ever talk to me like that!"

"Well then," she said spitefully, "now you know how I feel. He's just a little kid and a little too rich for my blood and let's face it-- I'm not really high class enough to go for that sort of thing."

"But," he asked, almost despite himself, "what about the way you always go red around him, then? Are you _sure_ maybe it's not _you_ whose the one with the crush on somebod…?"

And right about the time when Penelo had started wielding the frying pan she had been using for their dinner with deadly abandon was about when he had started _dodging_.

* * *

Contrary to what _some_ people thought, Vaan was not and didn't particularly ever plan to fall in love with the closest thing he had ever had to an evil twin.

People often asked him that question, usually right before they went and hit on either him or her. (And if he was being honest, he had to admit it was usually _her_.) And when he said no and shook his head in sheer horror at the very thought, there was usually at least one moment where they raised their eyebrows and wiggled them into the air and asked, _Never? She's quite a looker and you're not half bad yourself. And even when you two were kids, didn't you ever…?_

But as far as Vaan had always concerned, Penelo was just Penelo, no more and no less and nothing all that strange or exotic or exciting at all. He had seen her naked at least a dozen times before and he had bandaged up pretty much every part of her body and he had seen her work her admittedly impressive wiles on any number of targets that went less for pretty boys than for pretty girls… and still, he'd just never been able to think of her in _that_ way seriously.

For Vaan, Penelo had always just been… Penelo, his friend and his partner and the person he leaned on, who he needed to occasionally beat him the hell up and vice versa. Even when they'd been snot nosed kids with actual families to help them, she'd always been the girl that had nagged him into finishing up his homework and helping her with her dancing practice and figuring out new ways to outsmart her overprotective older brothers. When he thought of her, he still thought of the girl with a drippy nose and the straggling braids and the gap-teethed smile, no matter how scanty her clothes got or how scary her admirers became.

Because in the end, he loved Penelo. He always had and he always would. She was his past and his present, his friend and his family… and that was pretty much why he didn't want her to be his future or his lover either. Because he loved her and she loved him but just the thought of being with her I forever /I was just… weird. And creepy. And a little incestuous to boot. No matter how many guffaws and raised eyebrows came from admitting that to practically any other sky pirate or bounty hunter around.

He loved her but he didn't _love_ love her. And he knew damn well she really didn't feel that way about him either, especially not given the scrawny, mopey, so-called-_sensitive_ guys she tended to go after.

But that didn't mean it didn't make Vaan worry to think of her leaving him eventually. It had to happen, he knew, sooner or later. She'd always talked about wanting a family, wanting a husband, wanting to settle down and away from people who wanted to stab her through the throat for getting ahold of anything really valuable over and above their means.

It was inevitable, Vaan knew, that she'd find someone sooner or later. But that _that_ someone would end up being a goddamn _Emperor_ had been nothing that either had them been prepared for.

And he just didn't know how he felt about having her leave him and the his life so soon either.

* * *

Penelo mostly just sniffed and fumed and turned away when Vaan asked her about it some more in the months to come. If anything, she just got more and more stubborn about the matter, countering every single one of Vaan's arguments about the Emperor of Archadia having (easily exploitable, natch) feelings for her in increasingly grumpy ways that always spelled out PMS storm clouds on the horizon.

"He can't possibly have a crush on me," she had muttered after spending the week of Larsa's fifteenth birthday as his special guest, Vaan having had to take care of business that had mysteriously popped up elsewhere. "I mean, have you _seen_ some of the women that are always hanging around him nowadays? He could have any of them just by snapping his fingers. And why wouldn't he want _them_ instead of me? Hell, they know how to-- to-- to play the piano and giggle on command and speak 93 different languages and wear those stupid high heels and impress all the ninnies from his court like you wouldn't believe. I couldn't do any of that if held a moogle to my head and told me if I didn't, he'd explode on me."

Somehow, Vaan got the feeling that that wasn't exactly the sort of thing that inspired Larsa to wild passion anyway. And one upturned eyebrow later, Penelo's flush confessed that she had figured that out already.

"But look," she had just continued on doggedly, "what can I offer him anyway? I'm not educated, I'm not blue-blooded, I'm not high class-- hell, I'm not even _that_ pretty! I mean, I know he kinda... well, liked me or something when he was younger. But that was when he was _twelve_. He just turned _fifteen_. There's a world of difference in him here!"

"Yeah okay," Vaan finally said, less because he agreed than because Penelo had an impressive way of going on and on when she wanted to argue something out. "I guess you could believe that he keeps trying to have you stay over any time you can just because he wants to be your lord of the dance, or whatever. I mean, if you're willing to look right through something that freaking obvious, why not?"

"I can't believe," she just groaned, "that you're trying to get _me_ to be less oblivious to the world. Whose the one who spent our last trip to Mount Bur Damntheplace trying to charm the wrong target? You go for the Archadians that want the pretty boys, Vaan, not the pretty girls!"

Vaan just shrugged. Hey, he'd have gotten away with it too, if said target hadn't decided to start groping him below the belt and realized a little too soon that Vaan had a cluster of twigs and berries where something more along the lines of a bush should be.

"And anyway," she huffed, "why would I be interested in him? I mean, he's cute and all but somehow, I don't think Larsa's quite man enough for me."

"Well gee," Vaan muttered, rolling his eyes, "you mean, other than the fact that he's probably the wealthiest and most powerful kid in the north and could probably hand you the world on a silver platter?"

And one bruised arm later, Penelo was pointedly looking away as she unrolled the blueprints for their latest heist over his yelping. "I rob graves for a living, Vaan, not cradles. And other than when it comes to temples, I'm not gold digger either. So can we start talking about things that make _sense_ again, please? Like just how to get past _these_ guards and into _this_ treasury? Jules tells me its got some extremely interesting and, more importantly, _valuable_ treasures that once was part of a place called Nabudis…"

* * *

In any case, nothing Penelo had to say about the matter convinced Vaan any, especially not in light of the way Larsa just kept _looking_ at her, as though she were the most fascinating thing the world had to offer, and the way she had slowly but surely started looking back at _him_ over the years. And in retrospect, probably the most embarrassing bit about having the Emperor of Archadia in love with his partner was how damn long it had taken Vaan to find a way to taking advantage of the whole thing.

Archadians being Archadians, of course, it was easy as killing a cactuar as soon as his brain had started finally working. Because in the end, all Vaan had to do to get a helping hand was stroll into Old Archades, start bemoaning the prices of equipment as opposed to the relative poverty of poor and hungry sky pirates and stroll away content in the efficiency of the gossips there.

A mere three days later, he and Penelo woke up at their camp in the middle of the Nabradian Deadlands to a very pleasant surprise: three enormous crates worth of weaponry, equipment and food supplies that ended up being enough to keep the two of them going strong for at least half a year. And even as Vaan all but dove into the pile, he had to admit that as far as Archadians go, Larsa wasn't turning out to be such a bad would-be-brother-in-law either.

"The hell is this about?" Penelo asked afterwards, eyes wide open and the vein on her forehead already going all twitchy. "Even forgetting about just why someone would do this… how the hell could anyone have even _traced_ us here? _I_ didn't tell anyone about our destination, did you?"

"Course not," Vaan lied incoherently around a mouthful of food. "And anyway, Pen, you just _have_ to try this stuff. It supposed to be-- let's see, let's look at the package-- wazabi flavored cactuar drippings…"

* * *

Vaan's estimation of Larsa's goodwill admittedly went down a bit after getting the stomach ache from hell from eating a bit too many of anything and everything that had been flavored with the magical Rozarrian spice wazabi.

"Oh god," he groaned from the toilet of their ship, "I feel like I'm giving birth to the Anti-Kiltias right here."

"Too much information," Penelo yelled from somewhere in their tiny sitting room. "And can you keep the manly grunting down, _please_? I'm trying to read Larsa's letter and I still can't believe it but even _he_ has no idea who on earth could be helping us out here."

Even in the midst of sweaty, torturous and incredibly manly labor, Vaan had to pause. "And just what'd you if you _could_ figure out who gave all that stuff to us?"

He could hear her snort from yards away. "Give it back, of course. I mean, don't get me _wrong_, I like not having to worry about running out of groceries while fighting off fiends. But if I knew who… I'd return it, or at least whatever you aren't passing through your kidneys. It's just not right for us to take so much and not give anything back and you know it, Vaan."

"Then Larsa doesn't know either?"

She just sighed. "Not at all. Which is pretty weird considering how on top of things Archadians tend to be. Sometimes I almost feel like he's holding out on me…"

It figured, honestly speaking. But still, if nothing else, it also proved that whatever else Larsa was like, he was at least someone who did care for Penelo, up to and including to the point of not taking credit for his good deeds if she was willing to throw them back away.

Vaan had to hand it to him. Murderous relatives and creepy blood line aside, Larsa could almost be endearing when it came to falling in love with somebody.

* * *

Growing up, Vaan knew that he had never really been considered the sharpest sword in the weapons armory by anyone in Rabanastre, Lowtown or even in his own family. And even he had to admit that even the most brilliant of his plans had a way of sometimes spectacularly backfiring, necessitating a later and usually rather belligerent rescue by Sugar Thighs over there.

Usually, this was a reputation that actually _worked_ for Vaan. In much the way that Penelo was pretty damn good at acting like a blond bimbo when she needed to, he could exaggerate what she liked to call his god-given idiocy until he seemed as though he had no more brains in his head than an average Ivalicean Seeq. The bimbo and the bubble-brain, the moron and the muscle-head… acting just that way had saved their hides more than once in the long-range of things.

But if there was one thing Vaan had always been good at, it was predicting certain inevitable things would happen, even if nobody _ever_ believed him ahead of time. And somehow, with just that keen sense of the future, Vaan knew that sooner or later, the Dread Pirate Sugar Thighs would succumb to the charms of the Dread Emperor Crazy Eyes eventually.

And when it came to something as mad as that… well, all that he could really do right now for her was to try and help her be happy.

* * *

By the time Larsa had turned sixteen and become the most sought-after bachelor in all of Ivalice (the lucky dog), Penelo's rationalizations for just _why_ Vaan was crazy for thinking she had a thing for Larsa or vice-versa started to sound just a little a bit… desperate.

"He's not very good looking, you know," she told Vaan one night over a simple meal shared over their ship's cockpit, both of their respective flames having abandoned them for the evening. "I mean, looking back, it's actually a little weird because he used to be _so_ cute when he was a kid. Honestly, freaking adorable, even if he did want to grab at me practically every time he saw me. He had such pretty hair and such a cute little nose and such big, wide eyes… and now he's all squinty from reading too much and his face is getting all long and pointy and his nose is so damn _huge_ now, just like his brother's. He still has fabulous hair, though, I'll admit that much. _That_ didn't come from the rest of his family."

All Vaan could do was stare at her blankly. "You mean Velis? But you never even met him until you were seventeen. And I don't even think he has a brother either."

She just gave him one of those Vaan-are-you-still-sober looks that never failed to make him wince. "Velis? I was actually just thinking about Larsa. Why would I be talking about Velis anyway? "

Why indeed, Vaan thought wryly, after having had the eye-scarring experience of having walked in on them in bed not just once or twice but _three separate times._ "Why should _he_ be on your mind anyway?"

Turning bright red, Penelo seemed to have caught on. "Larsa's just on my mind because he asked me to visit him again in Archades, that's all. He says his anniversary as emperor is coming up and since he didn't want any of the gold diggers in Archades to annoy him during it, well…"

Vaan cocked a wary eyebrow at her; Penelo rushed on immediately. "He wants me there as a _friend_, Vaan, a _friend_. Just as someone to talk to during the night, so he isn't bored to death by all the catty bitches trying to claw up his short sleeves. And he wants me there mostly because he knows I wouldn't take advantage of him, unlike… well, unlike damn near everybody but Uncle Basch and me."

And then she paused and bowed her head a bit and said, almost more tenderly than Vaan could remember, "And I wouldn't do that. I really wouldn't even think about that sort of thing. I think he's got too many people in his life trying to do that to him already."

And just then, Vaan realized just what Larsa was going to have to have to overcome to get Penelo: her conscience, her kindness... and her sheer, stupid stubbornness about just doing what she thought was best, no more and no less and nothing else, thank you kindly. And having born the brunt of it for much of his life, Vaan didn't much envy Larsa for the monumental task ahead of him.

But that was, of course, assuming Larsa actually _loved_ Penelo, not just saw her as a pretty piece of sky pirating kitty, or whatever. Because if he did... well then, Vaan thought he had a shallow grave with the Solidor name ready to be engraved on it. (Or, barring that, since Basch actually _was_ pretty good at being very menacing in a plate of armor, at least a solid beating.)

But if Larsa loved her… if he wanted her and wanted to be with her and wanted to give her everything she wanted too, everything Vaan knew enough about Penelo to know that she had always looked for as well…

And that was just when Vaan realized it was probably high time that he himself paid a trip to Archades.


	2. Chapter 2

It was either post this up or go write some emo poetry over my loss. I think everyone here can agree that this was by far the better option.

In any case, this series is still for the luminous **Artemischan **and for wonderful **Threewalls**, who beta'd the _hell _out of this and helped salvage the original sprawling mess I served up to her. And my apologies ahead of time to the outrageously talented **Mithrigil**. I guess you can think of Larsa's way of "getting" the girl here as a sort of, er, homage? ;)

And as always, comments and questions are very much appreciated! This is probably the last long story I'll ever write and I'd love to know whether or not it's working for everyone!

* * *

**Title: Of Pirates and Plottings (Part 2/3)**

**Fandom: Final Fantasy XII**

**Series: The Uses of Enchantment**

**Characters/Pairings: Vaan, Larsa/Penelo, Larsa/Penelo/Vaan (Despite all of Vaan's protests to the contrary!)**

**Rating: R, strong language, sexual situations**

**Summary: Even someone stuck in the margins of a fairy tale can spin an interesting story.**

* * *

In the end, strangely enough, Vaan arrived at his destination just as his evil twin left, even managing to get a glimpse of her as she had gone. There had been flowers in her hands and new ribbons in her hair and the kind of shy, almost girlish smile that Vaan could have sworn she'd stop being able to give around men sometime around when Balthier had passed on.

It reminded him, almost, of the way Penelo had been around Vaan's brother, of all the little things she had done to get his sibling's attention, of the sort of glow that had always come around her when she had been fourteen years old and trying to be as graceful as possible whenever Reks had been around.

He missed that girl, Vaan had to admit. And he had thought she'd gone completely or just been buried forever, underneath all the armor Penelo always tried to put on. But she was there and somehow, Larsa seemed to have some strange way of constantly resurrecting her.

And more than anything, that was probably why Vaan stopped hiding in the curtains and made his way to Larsa, watching his friend watch his partner as she made her way out.

"She almost looks harmless like that," Vaan whispered almost into the emperor's ear, "doesn't she?"

To Larsa's credit, he didn't even flinch, just stood up straighter than ever and opened his eyes even wider, as though to get one last glimpse of Penelo before she turned around a corner and vanished from his sight. "Perhaps another man more ignorant of her peculiar brand of precision might find that to be the case. But we both know her well enough to know that she's most dangerous when she looks most at ease, correct?"

"Hell yeah," Vaan agreed, laughing. "I once saw her almost disembowel a man with a pen knife when she was pretending to be a harem girl and he called her sugar thighs one too many times." And at Larsa's wide eyes, he had to grin. "And the nickname stuck, which was the funny thing. Even if she bitch about having Turkish delights in her jumpsuits for a few weeks afterwards."

"Oh," Larsa said, and smiled slightly, incredibly forked eyebrows rearing up. "I was wondering why the privateers in my realm kept insisting on calling her the Dread Pirate Sugar Thighs for the last few months I spent watching out for her. I knew there had to be a story but it simply wasn't one I could yet tease out."

Now this… this was something both new and old, something Vaan had always suspected but never had evidence of till now. "So that means that you really _are_ trailing the two of us after all?"

"Not quite," his old friend demurely corrected. "I've been merely watching out for _her_. That you were often on the scene as her partner and accessory was merely a very... interesting fallout."

"Huh," Vaan said, and wondered if he ought to get upset. But then... that would explain just the sort of strange deus ex machinas that had often served to get Penelo and him out of ass-reams of trouble whenever they bit off more than they chewed which was, Vaan had to admit, sort of terribly often. He didn't worry enough and Penelo usually worried too much and that was sort of a guaranteed recipe for disaster on some of their more outrageous schemes. "I don't really mind, since that probably saved our rear plenty of times but... er... you do realize that Penelo'd probably kick your ass a little for thinking she's a pushover if she ever found out?"

That startled a laugh out of Larsa. "Very much so. And having seen her on the battle field in years past, I have no doubt that she'd be able to carry out that task with complete ease. But," and here his mouth softened, turned to lines it _still_ startled Vaan to see an Archadian could keep, "even the possibility of dire punishment seems worth it to keep her safe."

"Yeah," Vaan said softly. "She can sometimes make you feel that way, can't she?"

Larsa inclined his head in what Vaan took be a sort of yes. "Perhaps we could sit down and share a few bottles of wine and talk this all over?"

And after eyeing said bottles already scattered thoroughly from Penelo's last visit, Vaan shrugged. "Oh what the hell, I'm already here and I'm pretty sure she likes me too much to main me permanently. Why the hell not?"

* * *

And though Vaan knew Penelo really might maim him permanently if she ever found out, he ended up staying up almost the whole night with Larsa, speaking about damn near anything and everything, and whatever floated through their mind.

They talked about Penelo, of course: what she liked and what she did and how she was getting along now. Larsa let him ramble on and on about her weird little habits and all her strange little routines, like why she always wanted people around her to have clean fingernails ("She always said she couldn't stand dirt under there, reminded her too much of the last time she saw her brothers") and went about making decisions in the worst ways possible ("She decides just where we should go at the last minute then yelling at _me_ when we're the last ones on the scene!") and how she always took a stupidly long time in the shower ("And she carols within the tub too on occasion, yes?" "Oh, you poor bastard. Did she make you stand outside and listen to her singing because you didn't like her cooking either?" "No, that was not… precisely how it played out…")

But they talked about other things too, things even Vaan found himself surprised to be speaking of. Politics, for half an hour, and Vaan was pleased to know that though he couldn't really match Larsa's mind there-- not that _that_ was much of a surprise-- at least he knew enough about the way Balfonheim worked to get around Archadia to surprise Larsa into being a _little_ alarmed. And after politics, they had turned to sports and childhoods, how they'd grown up, and the parents they'd had, and the lessons they'd learned and the games they had played and just who they'd played those games with--and learning that Larsa's main playmates had been the gigantic armored thugs of the empire just explained so damn much.

And brothers as well, since having ones that screwed them over but good seemed to be the one thing they had in common, besides being driven mad (though in totally different ways) by a certain braided somebody.

Brothers as well-- and for the first time in years, Vaan had talked about Reks, about how he had run off to fight and came home and died and left him with nothing, almost nothing, besides a friend whose heart he had almost broken completely. And Larsa talked too, with a half-drained cup of wine in his hand and a voice almost indistinct to the point of sounding coarse, about his brother as well, and his father, and all that they'd left him in turn.

"An emblem," Larsa said, gestures towards his chest with his hand, fingers arching towards nothing and everything. "A mantle. A duty. A responsibility. They wanted my life and my years and my blood. And I'll sacrifice them as well, when they need me to. And the only thing I've ever wanted in recompense for all of that, for sacrificing everything, is and has always been her."

Sometimes, Vaan knew, it was best to be quiet, to see the strangest of moments play out.

"I love her," Larsa said, and his eyes when they turned to Vaan's looked faintly desperate, a little pathetic, and more sad than Vaan could ever remember them being before. But then, he wouldn't really know anyway. It hadn't been him who had been with Larsa when his brother had died, when he had become emperor, when he had faced a future without a father or a brother or a mentor or a guardian proper, with all the world before him and a place that left him no way out.

It had always been Penelo who had stood by Larsa during all those times. And maybe that was why Larsa was whispering to Vaan just what he was right now.

"I love her," the Emperor said again, and his words were simple and clear and honest and calm, as though they meant everything and couldn't be dammed up. "And I love her and I love her and I love her and _I love her_ and even if I could find a way to do so, I wouldn't stop. I want to live with her and I want to die with her and I want to _everything_ with her for all the rest of my life. And for once, all I want is for her to look at me and not look away and pretend she doesn't see what must be apparent even to her biased eyes."

"And," Vaan said, and can barely believe he was saying it. "And so you want me to... to what? Help you? Point you? Tell you what to do to get her to actually pay attention to you, instead of ignoring you like she likes to ignore everything she doesn't know if she wants?"

"Yes," his old friend said, mouth curving up into a funny little smile. "If you've any suggestions on how to circumvent that eventuality, I'd much prefer hearing it now."

Vaan had to sigh at what he was asking. "Hell, you know how stubborn Penelo can be when she's made up her mind about something. It's not like she's a lock you can just pick-- you've got to really goddamn _work_ on her when she thinks she's got something figured out. And… and… and what the _hell_, I'm a _pirate_! What would I even _get_ out of stepping into this mess anyways?!"

"Anything you want," Larsa said quietly. "Anything you need. I've an entire empire at my disposal and you may plunder from it freely. Take whatever you would like or desire."

Somehow, Vaan had a feeling that'd end up being his answer. And it was tempting as hell, god only knew, but that wasn't what he'd come here for right now.

"And what if," he finally said softly, "I want to see her happy? Do you think you could promise me that much?"

The smile that broke over Larsa's face at that was almost painful to look at, like staring into the sun during an eclipse that covered over everything. "I can do that, I believe. I would try with all my heart."

And as far as Vaan is concerned... that was really enough for now..

"Take care of her," Vaan finally said, knowing that everything else he needed to know, he had sort of figured out ahead of time. "I'll help but as much as I can but, hell, if you break your promise, I might have to kill you. I might have to kill you an awful lot."

For a minute, the Emperor of all of the grandest empire in all of Ivalice paused. And when he finally answered, he did it through a smile that made him seem almost like the young boy Vaan had known in years that had already left them behind so swiftly.

And maybe, Vaan thought, that was just why Penelo seemed to love him more and more every time he was in her sight.

"You needn't worry on that account," Larsa says softly. "I could never bring myself to do otherwise. And, if anything, it's always been she who's taken best care of me and kept me from troubles I'd otherwise find."

* * *

_It's just the same for me, buddy, _Vaan thought as he slowly made his way back home, back to Penelo, back to the little airship that had been their home for almost five years and had at most maybe another five to serve the both of them.

_It's just the same for me. And now I'm just trying to make it all up._

* * *

And so he had found little ways to help them both as the months had gone by and Penelo had opened her eyes little by little to what had always been hiding in plain sight.

He owed them both, frankly speaking. Larsa, because Vaan knew he hadn't done enough to help him in the first place, always trusting that something would turn up, always trusting that somehow Larsa would find his way despite everything against him in the world, just because he'd been born with a silver spoon in his mouth and Vaan had assumed that just because of that, it didn't matter what else hit him in his life.

And Penelo because-- well. Just because. Even if it meant losing a little bit of her, night by night by night.

Not that it felt that way most of the time. Because she was still very much Vaan's partner, very much his best friend, and very much the same crazy flirt she'd always been since she had turned thirteen and finally had some actual curves on her body. She was Vaan's main accessory in crime, still the backseat driver to his front seat psychopath and still the one who bullied him relentlessly into actually _planning_ things once in a while. She still refused to laugh at his best dirty jokes and still used up all the hot water in their ship for her never-ending showers and still dragged the most interesting men (and occasionally Aeguls) back to her bunk and did the most _incredibly_ noisy things with them that Vaan _had_ to retaliate against with any stray viera he can lure back on his own.

She was still his partner and she was still the Penelo he had known and sometimes, it almost felt like nothing could ever change the life they'd grown accustomed to. And sometimes, Vaan even found himself wishing that _was_ the case.

But things were changing and Vaan could chart them just as easily as he learned to encourage her trips to the north and needle her about just what she did there and piss her off by talking about just how much tail Larsa must have gotten by this time.

Things were changing, they really were, especially with Penelo spending more and more of her free time in Archades, whose emperor had apparently taken to leaving his throne with mysterious fevers for days at a time. Things were changing and Vaan could read it as easily as he could see how more and more of Penelo's men had turned into androgynous pretty boys with dark hair and scrawny limbs and large, light colored eyes.

Vaan knew better than to ask though and contented himself with simply rolling his eyes and saying a few scattered prayers for the two stupidest and love-sick dopes he had ever known in his life.

And one day, Penelo came back to their ship and looked at Vaan and told him that she had found herself kissing Larsa for the first time. And even if Vaan had thought about this ahead of time, he knew that he wouldn't have been able to predict the way she'd look afterwards-- flushed but trembling, pale but bright, incandescent with happiness but almost scared right out of her mind.

"What the hell was I even thinking?" she asked, and there were no tears in her eyes but her hand were trembling. "And now just what the bloody _hell_ am I supposed to now do?"

* * *

They talked for much of the rest of the night and in an odd way, it wasn't all that different from being with Larsa-- albeit a Larsa that wasn't afraid to aim below the belt when Vaan asked if the person who had tried to kiss her was maybe just suffering from really poor eyesight. And because he knew that nothing was probably better for these kinds of things than a good couple of shots of whiskey, he had even benevolently dug into his emergency stash when she had inevitably ran out of the Rozarrian rum that she so liked.

"And the thing is," Penelo said, somewhere in between her fourth drink and her ninth, "is that I don't even know _why_ he likes me. I really don't! I mean, he's like--" and she wiggled her fingers into the air around her head desperately, "--and I'm like--" and she sort of swayed them around her midsection right now "--y'know what I'm talking about, right?"

"Not really," Vaan had to admit. "And I don't know why you always have to make things so jumbled up anyway. You like him. He's been hot for you since before his voice broke. What the hell's the problem anyway? What's keeping you from making a real man out of him anyway?"

Right now, Penelo looked rather as though she was thinking of regurgitating everything she had already taken in for the night. "First off, let's not even get into the whole puberty thing, Vaan. It's weird enough that he's younger than me-- I don't need to think of what he was like before he even grew out of his cute little booties. And if you--" Suddenly she looked rather thunder-struck. "If you figured this all out, who else might have done it too?!"

Vaan tried to shrug as innocently as possible and not let it on that pretty much everyone who had ever seen the two of them together, _ever_, probably had some idea. "No clue, just like always. And anyway, does it even matter? Again, you like him. He likes you. What's keeping you from doing all these incredibly gross things that I don't even want to think about with each other?"

And now Penelo was biting her lip and looking down with a flush on her face that Vaan just _knew_ meant that she wanted something very, very badly indeed but was too stupid to actually go after it because of her conscience or something equally dumb. "Because it's not just about what I want… it's about what's good for the both of us in the future. And… c'mon, Vaan, goofy ideas about the power of love aside, he's an emperor and I'm… hell, I'm not exactly empress material, am I? Even if I liked him, I'd have to be goofier than you around a gaggle of vieras to think we'd ever be able to make it in the long rung."

"But _do_ you want him in the future?" Vaan asked, curious almost despite himself. "I mean, you never shut up about him and you're always going off to see him and the last time I came to Archades, you sure as hell were touching him an awful lot…"

She glared at Vaan for that but it was a pretty lazy glare in her arsenal of stares, the sort of glare that was about as internally paralyzing as a pat on the back. Vaan just stared blankly back, using the power of obliviousness to shield him like always, and she gave in after a moment. Playing dumb-- or at least _dumber_-- really _was_ a good idea sometimes.

"It's not that I don't want to find out what it'd be like," she finally admitted, and in vino there really _was_ veritas. "Because sometimes-- hell, a _lot_ of the times-- he's just so cute and so sweet and so friendly and so... so... so... so goddamn _fuckable_, until I just want to mount him and _bang_ everything between us right out. Hell, the last time I was with him, he had me playing chess until I just wanted him to bend me over the board and--"

"Oh God," Vaan interrupted, shaken to his very core. "No more. Just stop!"

"Wuss," Penelo said almost affectionately. Vaan made a face back at her before he realized just what he wanted to know right now.

"So then, I mean... why don't you? I mean, I know you're the biggest goddamn worry wart this side of Migelo and clearly you've got some sort of crazy I-need-to-torture-myself-over-nothing genes in you but… well. Seriously. Why bother about politics so much?"

She gave him a rather dry look. "Yeah, Vaan, not worrying about any of that makes sense. Because _that's_ never something to be concerned about with Larsa."

Vaan wasn't sidetracked. "But that isn't all of it, is it, Pen? Don't think I spent all these years being nagged by you without figuring out _that_ much."

And she sighed in that way that always meant that he'd somehow managed to surprise her by not being as irrepressibly dumb as she usually wanted him to be, right before she went on.

"Nah, that isn't it. It's just... Fuck, Vaan, I'm not actually _stupid_. I _know_ he wants me. I know he's wanted me before he was even someone _worth_ wanting. I know all I'd have to do is spread my legs in one part of his palace and he'd come running right after. It's just..."

Vaan bent down a little, until her head was resting on his shoulder. Her nose bumped against his neck when she next spoke.

"It's just that I don't know if he _loves_ me, the real me, the one _you_ know all about. Sometimes I think he wants me just because he knew me when he was still a kid, when he could chase after me without having to worry about his empire. And I'm his friend and he's apparently got really bad taste in ladies and sometimes it's like all he wants to do is put me on a pedestal and pretend that I'm ... some sweet little angel of hope that'll never go away from his life."

When she lifted her eyes back up to Vaan's they were swollen but not wet. Somehow, that made him proud.

"I don't know if he'd love me if he really _knew_ me. And I'm pretty sure he'd never even figure it out unless we really _did_ get together. So what am I supposed to do? Cut him off from my life? Tell him that I don't want him, even though I do? Or just ignore all the political crap and seduce him before he seduces me, just to show him what I'm really like?"

If there was one thing Vaan knew and despaired about Penelo, it was the fact that she was probably the worst decision maker he had ever encountered in his entire life. He wasn't sure if it was due to some traumatic past of hers or if she'd been born stunted but most of the time, but somehow, she would always either decide things by the very spur of the moment or take a nauseatingly slow time figuring out just what to do, dragging her foot at every turn until something forced her to get a move on.

But Vaan had been her friend for close to one and a half decades and he knew just how to push Penelo's buttons to get her to finally do what she had always wanted to do. And frankly speaking, Vaan knew that if he had to see these two idiots dance around each other for _another_ six years, he might end up stabbing himself in the face just to get away from the never ending foreplay. He knew Penelo could be a tease sometimes but this was getting _ridiculous_.

Desperate times called for desperate measures and sometimes, a sky pirate just had to do what he had to do.

"Why the hell not?" Vaan suggested carelessly. "If nothing else, it'd be an interesting way to turn the tables on him and get some power back for yourself. It'd be sort of sad to let some scrawny rich kid that used to run around in heels and tights get one up on you without you taking charge for once."

And there were a lot of things, Vaan knew, that Penelo wouldn't do for money. There were quite a number of things she wouldn't do for the sake of her pride or dignity or sky pirating status either. And there were maybe even a couple of things she wouldn't do for love or for friendship, though those were far and few between.

But if there was one thing Penelo would do almost anything for, it was her extremely strange sense of humor. And right now, Vaan had a feeling if nothing else, this could finally help her make up her mind.

"It would," she eventually said, "be pretty hilarious to see a lady sky pirate seduce the hell out an emperor that's been after her around since he was twelve, wouldn't it?"

"Maybe," Vaan said blandly. "And if it doesn't work out in the end, you could always turn around and blame it on me the way you like so much."

Penelo made a terrifying sound that could only be described as a _titter_ (oh, she really _was_ drunk now) and leaned over to lay her heavy head on Vaan's shoulder. "All right then. Assuming I _do_ lose my mind and try to pull Operation Bang the Emperor's Brains Out Until He Stops Being Stupid off... Larsa's eighteenth birthday is just over next month. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

And he closed his eyes and thought of Larsa's face whenever he spoke of Penelo and Penelo's face whenever she spoke of Larsa and thought: _What the hell. Maybe this is enough_.

"I think I am. But how are we supposed to use our left-over stash of alcohol and your bare naked body to take over the world?"

"For once," Penelo said brightly, "you've got the right idea after all. I guess we're just gonna have to do the same-old same-old at Larsa's if we wanna carry this off with style. And all the better if only we could work some sort of threesome into the deal..."

"I'm not drunk enough to plan for that," Vaan muttered in a sort of hushed, sacrilegious horror. "All the liquor in the world wouldn't be enough to prepare me for something like that."

She just shrugged. "Your loss. But are you drunk enough to start celebrating the start of something new and possibly totally disastrous right now?"

And that was something he could toast to for the rest of his life.

* * *

The inevitable happened only three days later. And oddly enough, in the end, Vaan didn't know and didn't want to know the details of just what Penelo had planned and done to bag her prey that fateful night. All that he could figure out-- and this was mostly because people kept _insisting_ on telling him, as though he could just drag Penelo away from something she really wanted without a tranquilizer dart or twelve-- was that it had happened sometime during the day of Larsa's official coming of age at eighteen.

Vaan had been there, of course, and he-- and the rest of the ballroom, he was pretty sure-- had seen the way Larsa's eyes had lit up like all the chandeliers in the room when a masked lady with a most luxurious mane of golden hair had entered the fete and charmed the Emperor right out of his very mind. He had boggled properly when she had cut a swathe through legions of upper-class admirers and stopped the music dead when she had insisted on taking her place by the Emperor's side. And Vaan had even stuck around when they had danced nearly every dance in the ball together, when they had ignored everyone in the room but each other and when they disappeared together from the public view right about the stroke of midnight.

Hell, he and Basch had even been the one to keep Larsa's other guardians from figuring out where they had gone with liberal uses of vanishga, green magic and poisoned canapes. The last wasn't strictly necessary but, as Basch had said, sometimes there was a great deal of pleasure gained from using the classics.

After all, they both had figured that even the craziest of the crazy needed a bit of privacy when doing the whole "sweeping you off your feet" thing for each other. Even if Vaan had to admit that he didn't quite know who was sweeping _who_ off their feet right now.

* * *

She came back to their ship the next morning, with flower petals in her hair and a smile on her face and a certain strut to her walk. She didn't even speak about it for the first day or so she was back, just drifted around with a goofy smile and made small talk about just where they should go for their next vacation-- didn't the Phon Coast sound nice this time of year?-- and made pancakes for breakfast that all came out in the shape of lopsided hearts.

Because she was leaving, Vaan knew, already leaving in some way she didn't know anything about either. And all he could do was look at her-- at her eyes and her smile and the freckles forming on her skin-- and decide that for her sake, he'd try to be happy, try to be supportive, try not to worry about what'd happen when all this was done.

It wasn't up to him, anyway. And as long as she was happy, it really ought to be enough.

And when she finally decided to start talking about it, he realized that getting her to also shut up would have always been nice.

"I think god invented younger men because they are _the best thing ever_ in the history of everything that's ever been done."

Vaan had to fight hard to keep from shuddering at the _possible meanings_ of what she was saying. "So I guess everything with you two crazy loons went fine?

"God yes," she said with a sweetly nostalgic and slightly dirty grin that made the hairs on Vaan's neck raise up with alarm. "Peachy keen. Perfectly wonderful. Good enough that I'm willing to forgive you for getting me piss drunk."

Now _that_ he had to roll his eyes at. "Oh please, you just used that as an excuse to finally get a move on things. And…" And here he hesitated but even a couple of bruises would be worth knowing. "And, are you… _happy_ now?"

For a moment, Penelo seemed almost startled by the question. But then she smiled and her tell-tale blush flooded her cheeks and then he knew it was all right.

"Yeah, Vaan. I really am. And... and I know I bitched about everything that's against us before and even being happy's not enough to leave it all behind. But... I really do want to give it a chance with Larsa and see where we end up. Sometimes you just have to have hope in the future, right?"

As far as Vaan could tell, that about summed up it. "Hell, you might as well as well. What else could you possibly give up now?"

She raised her eyebrows impressively-- another trick she had cadged from Larsa. "Whatever virtue I managed to keep till now?"

Vaan had to laugh at that. "Yeah, because you're just so damn virtuous when you're trying to get hold of treasure by dropping a bit of trou--"

Later that evening, Vaan would find out that there were at least thirteen different ways to torture a person with a roll of duck-tape and a stick of butter… and Penelo had, unluckily for him, somehow mastered them all.

* * *

**Author's Note**: A few of my wonderful reviewers have noted previously that Penelo and Vaan (and probably Larsa as well, now that he has a more prominent role) sound a bit OOC in this fic. I just wanted to clarify that that sort of OOCness-- at least compared to their incarnations in the FFXII canon-- was actually planned for. After all, during the majority of this piece, Penelo and Vaan have spent almost six years of their lives being romanticized criminals… and Larsa has spent the last six years being the ruler of a large and _incredibly_ cut-throat and competitive empire. But after six years, they've all become mature, hardened and rather cynical adults, rather than being the cute, innocent, and rather sheltered (after all, even Penelo and Vaan had Migelo to get their asses out of trouble) children that they were in the game itself. 


	3. Chapter 3

Y'know, usually, when people get engaged, they _get _presents from others. But I just got engaged and I thought, what the hell, given how amazingly supportive everyone has been, why don't I _give_ a present to everyone here? ;)

Thanks again to everyone who's been supporting me through this crazy, hectic time. I'm almost ridiculously happy right now and I can only hope I'll be so in the future.

* * *

**Title: Of Pirates and Plottings (Part 3/3) **

**Fandom: Final Fantasy XII**

**Series: The Uses of Enchantment**

**Characters/Pairings: Vaan/(Larsa/Penelo), Basch**

**Rating: R, strong language, sexual situations**

**Summary: Even someone stuck in the margins of a fairy tale can spin an interesting story.**

* * *

Watching two lunatics fall in love, Vaan was finding out, was one of the more interesting experiences he'd ever encountered.

He supposed that, in many ways, this was something he should have expected. After all, he had always known Penelo was someone inclined to be hopelessly neurotic about second-guessing every decision that she made and, from the desperation fermenting in Basch's eyes every time Vaan dropped by to see him, Larsa probably wasn't much better. If anything, he might even be worse than Penelo was when riding the cotton pony on top of Mount OMGBBQPMSWTF.

"Does he," Vaan had asked Basch once, "ever get as annoying as Penelo does when she's groaning about how things are going on?"

With the majestic calmness of a mountain, Basch had slowly taken his gored-bull-meets-parasitic-cricket helmet off in response.

"Because," Vaan grumbled on, "he can't be _nearly_ as bad as Penelo. I mean, he's a _guy_ and of course guys aren't as crazy as the ladies get when they're hooking up with someone."

Basch simply stared somewhere off into the distance. Vaan took it as a signal to complain on.

"I mean, seriously, I know Larsa can be… weird and all but he can't get _nearly_ as frustrating as Penelo gets when she wants to bitch about Larsa or bash Archades or go on and on about what they're gonna do for the future. And she complains about the weirdest things too, like how he's always sending her letters and telling people to keep track of her and getting annoyed when she meets other guys and all of that stuff. Aren't girls supposed to _like_ that sort of thing? But then when they get them, they bitch about them. I mean, what are guys _supposed_ to do then? God, Pen's so freaking hard to put up with. I'd change places with you in a heart beat. I mean--"

--and Vaan had missed a beat when Basch had turned his head to look at him _straight in the eyes_--

"--I mean, don't you agree that Larsa's probably a lot easier to put up with than her?"

Larsa's guardian had simply looked at Vaan with the stony resilience of a man who was damned and yet was determined to endure all the world, despite how many evil twins, lunatic princesses and terrifying, love-sick, adolescent lunatics life threw at him. And within his hollow eye sockets, Vaan could have sworn he saw the flames of hell themselves, rising up to lap at whatever poor souls fell within them.

After that, Vaan had sort of stopped complaining about anything whatsoever to Basch.

That didn't, of course, mean there weren't times when Vaan didn't despair of the fact that he had actually helped his partner get together with the tetchiest ruler in all of the land. In fact, he had wanted to pitch himself off an Archadian balcony for ever having _had_ thought of such a terrible thing plenty of times… especially when Penelo, for reasons he would never be able to fully grasp, used him as the most reluctant agony aunt Ivalice had ever had.

He wasn't even sure just _why_ Penelo had picked him from the job, other than maybe her general sense of sheer, sadistic exhibitionism wherever he was concerned. Frankly speaking, out of the two of them, she was the one who had been in more serious relationships and (though it hurt him like a psychic kick in the nuts to admit this) the one with more sexual experience as well. (It wasn't easy, after all, to be a man who loved frequently rabid mutant bunny women as much as he did.) But for some reason, every time Penelo hit a hitch in her relationship with Larsa, she always came winding back to him, as though _he_ could do something to help her get over it.

"Vaan," she'd moan to him over their breakfast, "do you have _any_ idea why Larsa's so goddamn possessive? He never wants me to flirt with other men, he gets all twitchy when I mention I'm going to dance somewhere and god forbid I even _mention_ I saw Llyud or Velis or anyone else I used to be with. He practically has a heart attack and then tries to guilt me out of ever talking to them!"

"Vaan," she'd groan over their lunch, "why are men so goddamn _strange_ sometimes? I swear, it's like Larsa wants to be my travel agent or something. He always gets neurotic if I go somewhere without telling him and then tries to get me to tell him everything about where I'll be. What the hell? It's like having my own royal stalker sometimes!"

"Vaan," she'd wail over their increasingly infrequent dinners, "how can one mere man be so goddamn _neurotic_? I mean, I know he had a tough childhood but so did we and look at how well adjusted _we_ are! You think maybe he'd be offended if I told him he needed to find some professional help for his crazy eyes and what-not?"

And Vaan's greatest way of striking back was usually to either yell at her about having really bad taste in bed partners or sink into a small ball on the ground and rock back and forth in increasing desperation. Usually, she'd take pity on him and let him finish his food in peace… even if she did just start up the next time they sat down for a meal again.

From time to time, Penelo would still invite Vaan to threesomes with even more glee than previously. And the most disturbing thing was that since Penelo's new "_partner_" was apparently hypnotized or pussy whipped or _whatever_ with her, Larsa'd probably go along with it if she asked _him_ as well.

"Would it help if me and Larsa wore some fake viera ears in bed?" she had asked perkily one morning. "I mean, since I know you got some weird bunny fetish from being exposed to the Giza Plains and Fran during your formative years and all..."

"Argh," Vaan had said in cringing, wordless response. "Argh, argh, _argh_!"

"Well," she said, pouting prettily. "I guess that'd more or less count as a no then, huh?"

It was also annoying when they tried to plan future heists together as well. It never stopped being aggravating to know that there was some huge prize on the horizon that they couldn't go after because Penelo had to go over to wreck some official matchmaking function or wanted to rescue Larsa from the terrifying banshees of his court or just spent the night in someplace Vaan didn't know, doing things he didn't even want to speculate about.

And even though Vaan knew this was probably something he had to get used to, it didn't mean he didn't get lonely by himself. Even if Penelo was sort of a pain in the ass sometimes… she was a pain he'd gotten used to. And wanted to work with. And kind of… didn't mind all that much when she wasn't driving him mad with her love life either.

It was inevitable, though. Vaan knew that. She'd never signed up to be a sky pirate forever and they had both always known she'd leave after a few years of doing it. She was really much too much a worry wart to live on the knife's edge forever, he'd always realized that. Hell, he'd been lucky she'd even decided to go off with him for the few years she had, rather than staying in Rabanastre to work as a medic or a writer or whatever else she could have become. And it was… good, he knew, to see her happy in the way she was now.

After all, during the incredibly rare times when Penelo wasn't being a whiny jerk or grossing him out with plans for a _menage a tois_ or getting the way of them making a decent pirating profit … it was actually sort of… sweet, seeing her with Larsa. Because as much as she might complain about him when she _wasn't_ around him, Vaan could see how happy she was when she was with Larsa, how often they looked and smiled and whispered to and touched each other, how Larsa's apparently vast waves of crazy receded around her, how even the ocean of hopeless despair in Basch's eyes seemed to slowly evaporate as time went on.

Which should have been Vaan's cue, of course, to know that _that_ happy state of events couldn't last for long either.

* * *

"I just had sex with the Emperor of Archadia," Penelo said a few otherwise happy months later, and less to Vaan than to the enormous mug of pale ale she was currently nursing. "And it was the worst goddamn experience I've ever had in my life."

"Oh my god," Vaan moaned after his brain had finally finished processing the bizarre and disturbing images _that_ conjured up. It wasn't unlike trying to picture his brother haven't a go at it with… well, with Penelo, disturbingly enough. "Why do you have to _tell_ me about these things? Why do you always think I need to now them the way you know them now?!"

"Because," she said sourly, "If I have to suffer, you have to suffer as well. Oh boy, did I suffer, Vaan. I suffered a _lot_."

Somehow, even though he knew the details might scar him from life, Vaan just _had_ to ask. "That bad, huh?"

Penelo raised three fingers up into the air; despite himself, Vaan winced. "Okay... so I guess it _is_ that bad. So… so just what are you gonna do about it now?"

"I have no idea," his partner said miserably, looking down into the already emptying bottom of her cup. "I mean, I'm thinking that maybe I could train him into lasting a bit longer but so help me, I don't even know _where_ to begin with such a hopeless case. God, Vaan, he didn't even know how to insert tab L into slot P properly the first time around!"

Vaan winced again. "Gee… trying to have him learn that must have been… fun."

She gave a snort that somehow snowballed into a combination of a sigh and a cry. "You have no fricking idea. But I mean… how the hell was he supposed to learn otherwise? I think he was keeping himself… pure or whatever for me and-- god, just _look_ at just who he has to talk to in Archades. They're all blue-blooded asses that are either arranging their creepy little rendezvous to one-up each other or military men who run around in giant suits of armor that take hours to take off. It's like everyone in his empire is _trying_ to have a miserable sex life."

"You know," Vaan said speculatively, "that just might explain a lot. I mean, if all the Archadians suck in bed, maybe that explains why they seem to want to punish everyone else for having more good times? Although… man, maybe that's just because they keep jumping into bed with prick teases like you. You've been with each other for how many months and you still didn't do the deed till now?"

She snorted again, though thankfully this time without the cry. "Not everyone has to rush to the main event, Vaan. Some of us take the scenic tour. And right now, all I'm thinking about is just how to get Larsa to stop being so damn sad the next time we start rolling around the country side of our beds with each other..."

Luckily though, being male himself, Vaan had a rather better idea of just how to help with that problem... though even his visionary gaze had never foreseen a future where he'd be teaching the Emperor of Archadia how not to suck in the sack. After all, greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his sanity for the sake of his friend's incredibly terrible sex life. Or whatever.

…Besides, the blackmail material he'd probably get out of this would likely be _priceless_. And whatever else he was, Vaan was much too much a pirate to let any opportunity as golden as this one down.

* * *

"So seriously," Vaan began, his eyebrows threatening to annex his forehead as he stared at the Emperor of one of the mightiest empires in all of Ivalice, right in the very stronghold of his power. "Why the hell were you a virgin the first time you had sex with Penelo?"

Right now, though, said Emperor didn't particularly seem as though he was in the stronghold of _anything_ very imperial right now. If anything, thanks to the rapidly spreading flush on his cheeks and the face he had now slammed against the desk he had been working at before Vaan had interrupted him, he looked younger and more lost than Vaan could ever remember.

"Did she tell you that directly?" Larsa finally groaned when he had stopped head-desking himself. "Or was it something you inferred merely from how horrible and abrupt our entire first evening together in bed was?"

"A little bit of column A and a little bit of column B," Vaan admitted. "And since you're you and you sure could have gotten some if you wanted to, what with the whole being emperor thing and the fact that you've got groupies everywhere in Archades and all…"

At least, and for once, Vaan wasn't the only one massively suffering from the mating dance of the biggest dunderheads he had ever known. Still about the color of the remains of the Rogue Tomato, Larsa weakly raised a hand to get Vaan to stop. "Yes. That is indeed true. If I had been predisposed to such actions, I could have garnered years of practical experience in the… boudoir, I suppose, by now. But I…"

It was, Vaan had to grudgingly admit, sort of cute to see Larsa, who never seemed to be at a loss for words in pretty much all the time Vaan had known him, struggle for the right ones now. "But I wanted to experience my first carnal encounter with her. Because I love her and I want only her and it would have cheapened the moment to have spent the moment with any other while picturing her all the while. And though I don't particularly regret saving my… purity, I suppose, for her presence, I _do_ feel rather wretched about said purity wrecking most of the enjoyment I wanted to give her now."

All Vaan could do was sigh. "God, Larsa. Do you have any idea how much you sound like a squealy little girl right now?"

His old friend smiled back rather slyly. "Considering how I apparently spent my childhood appearing as such to most around me, it seems fitting enough."

Vaan had to laugh and, after a moment, Larsa joined in. Then, still chuckling, Vaan clapped a hand around his friend's shoulder. "So what the hells the problem, then? Can't get it up? Can't _keep_ if up? Or do you just get it off too fast whenever you're around her?"

Larsa just turned another interesting and exciting shade of red, hunched his head down again and muttered something about the last problem being possibly the most relevant one in his case.

Huh. But Vaan supposed it made sense. After all, Larsa _was_ just eighteen years old and had apparently had some sort of weird fatal attraction for Penelo or possibly just the worst taste in girls that Vaan had ever heard of. Really, given all that, it just figured.

"You know," Vaan said eventually, "if you're really about to blow the motherload every time you see her, then you're just gonna have to figure out some way to hold it together until she's ready to get off too. Maybe you could picture something really awful like… um… your parents having sex to stop you from getting off?"

When he finally looked up again, Larsa looked slightly disturbed but oddly relieved as well. "Unfortunately, though that might be a viable option for most people, I don't particularly remember what either of their appearances, especially that of my mother. And given all that, I'm not sure I would be able to strain myself in recalling them when I'm with my… partner either."

Vaan tried again. "Well, what about trying to picture your scary-ass _brother_ having sex? I mean, you can't tell me that something like that wouldn't gross you the hell out, especially considering how freaking weird and veiny he got the last time we saw him before we punted his punk ass off."

Promising enough, Larsa looked a little paler. "That… that strikes me as a more workable solution. Unfortunately, seeing as how I can't even recall my brother expressing any sort of romantic or passionate interest in anything other than the voices in his head, I'm not sure that would work within the heat of the moment."

And then Larsa looked down and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like _and thank god for it_ under his breath.

"Well fuck," Vaan groaned, already running out of options. He usually pictured Penelo's shrewish face scolding him when he was trying to hold off on coming but that probably wouldn't work for Larsa, what with him _wanting_ to bed her better and all. "Okay, okay, don't panic. I've got it. Why not try to picture Seeq sex whenever you're trying not to get off?"

For a very long moment, there was completely silence. And then, in a voice muted to the point of a squeak, Larsa said, "Pardon?"

Vaan beamed triumphantly. "C'mon, really, doesn't that make sense? 'Cause really, I've met some freaky ass people out there that like, y'know, things you wouldn't even believe but I've never, ever, _ever_ met anyone who liked Seeq sex-- or the orgies they're supposed to have when they're trying to make squeally little Seeq babies either."

"I think," Larsa said in a faint tone, "there's probably a very plausible reason for that."

"But y'see," Vaan went on happily, "that could be just the thing you need to keep from spurting when it just ain't good enough. I mean, can't you just picture trying to see a couple of Seeqs getting it on? With all those blubber and those scales rubbing against another after they've taken off their clothes and started slobbering on each other and humping their legs and making those scritt-scritt glub-glub scritt-scritt sounds…?"

Even despite the delicate shade of mossy green he'd turned into, Larsa somehow managed to whimper a protest out. "Thank you, Vaan, for such a visual. But somehow, I really don't believe I would _want_ want to picture any gyrations made by… such… such… such creatures within my bedroom, especially when my lady sky pirate is around. I don't want the few precious moments I have of her presence to be tainted by such… interesting… and… fascinatingly detailed… thoughts…"

Vaan just had to sigh at that. "Well, then. If you're wanna be _that_ uncreative, you could just do what lots of guys do for their ladies. You get them off _before_ you start doing anything for yourself. And since you're so freaking eager to please, it's shouldn't be hard for you to do that either."

Suddenly, Larsa looked up with a surprising gleam in his eyes. "And… precisely what would I have to accomplish such a task in, er, 'getting' Penelo off?"

In times like these, Vaan always felt as though he was looking into a gaping abyss that was just ready to swallow him up. Despite all that, though, he clenched his jaw and gritted his teeth and moved on. "Lost of things, depending on what she likes, wherever she likes. And no, before you ask, I don't know and don't want to known just what that is about Penelo either. You use your hands or your mouth or your tongue or your cock or whatever other body part she wants. You pay attention to her and you ask her what she wants and you keep your eye on her at all times to see if you're doing something she likes. You try to surprise her with romance or candy or flowers or, knowing Pen, something that can keep her still and make her pay attention to you for once. Think leather-- it might be the only thing that'll shut her up for long."

Larsa's pupils became disturbingly dilated after that last sentence. Suppressing a shudder, Vaan went on.

"And until you get the hang of it, you make sure you do exactly what she wants, when she wants, to make sure she has a good enough time to come back for round 2. Because buddy, I've been with a dozen or so women and woman… _ish_ people already and I can tell you this much. If you don't make making them happy one of the top things in your life, you'll lose them. And even though I've never been with anyone the way you're with her, it hurts like hell to lose them. And if you make her unhappy, you'll be losing some of your permanent teeth. So you better start boning up on some of your lady-stroking techniques as soon as you can."

There was a long, long silence after that, long enough so that even Vaan had wonder if he'd said something hopelessly tactless, like the time he mentioned age to Fran or Ashe having beauty, brains and a likely fetish for chains to Basch. But then, slowly, Larsa began to speak.

"I am, of course, sure that Penelo might have mentioned engaging in a _ménage à trios_ to you in a jesting way several times before but… well. Perhaps you might give it some serious thought after all? Perhaps, with your permission, you, Penelo and I might decide to enjoy a bit of-- bedroom tussling, I suppose, just to make sure I do not lose either my permanent teeth or my lady love in the future. Though of course, I'd have to insist ahead of time on being the repository of any and all of your physical and sexual pleasur--"

It's probably a good thing that, for one reason or another, Vaan was always the one in their party to receive the summons with wings. Otherwise, he probably wouldn't have survived tossing himself off a god-knows-how-high Archadian balcony to avoid hearing just how his friend planned to end that sentence right now.

* * *

Oddly enough, quite a few bounties for stray sky pirates started coming from around Archadia right after Vaan's impromptu lesson plan. And Penelo suddenly got into the habit of not only taking on said bounties but staggering back to their airship days afterwards, usually with a brilliant smile on her face and a cache full of new armor and weaponry and suspiciously dark bruises on her collar bone that she refused to heal.

"If you're asking about the new equipment," she said, too happy even to snap at Vaan like usual, "it's only because Archades has some _brilliant_ prices for these things. I, uh... I managed to get find a great contact there that tends to, erm, reward me really well when I'm good to-- for him. And really, I'd have to be a fool to turn down something this steady!"

"And the hickeys?" Vaan asked, eyebrows raised as high as they'd go. "What can possibly explain _them_, hmm?"

She doesn't even have the shame to look guilty. "Oh those? Now _those_ are from Larsa. Did you really think I'd go all the way to the capital city without paying him a visit or twelve?"

* * *

For almost half a year, things went on in much the same way, though even Vaan wasn't oblivious enough (he never had been, not really) to think that it would happen indefinitely. But time went by and things were well, better than he had ever hoped they could get in the crazy, mad-cap, mixed up mess that he called his life, sandwiched between demented emperors and lady sky pirates that loved them truly, madly and possibly off the deep end of sanity as well. And it was all a big jumble of heists and hormones, of madmen and imperial mistresses, of the strangest people in the world finding each other and making them happy and trying his best to be happy for them, even when he felt he had his face pressed against love's glass, watching them do what he just couldn't right now.

And then one day Penelo walked into their ship and looked Vaan directly in the eye and he somehow knew that everything was going to change now, everything, everything, everything. And she was smiling and shaking and he knew then that whatever happened now would change everything and so he looked up at her from his chair and put his arm out until she settled into the bend of his elbow and pulled her to him, held her close, and asked her what the hell she could possibly be up to now.

"I think," she said, and trembled like a wet dog against his side. "And I think I might have just done the dimmest thing I've ever thought of in my entire life."

There wasn't very much Vaan could say to that so he just nudged her again, waited for her to go on.

"Larsa asked me to marry him," she said quietly, her tremors easing down just a little bit as Vaan slung his arm around her again, steadying her up. "And I said yes. But I shouldn't have. Because I have to go back around now and turn him down so I don't end up hurting him even more later on."

He had to put his forehead against her shoulder for a minute, just to understand it. But as soon as the world stopped spinning, he sighed and wondered if it'd be alright if he hit the future empress of Archadia upside the head to get her to stop making a small amount of sense now.

"You goddamn crazy woman," he said gently instead. "What the hell are you going on about?"

"Look," Penelo said, and her voice sounded almost eerily rational, nothing at all like the energetic harpy Vaan was used to having in his life. "You know and I know and somewhere, deep down inside, even Larsa knows that I'm not the sort of woman he should be with, right?"

Vaan gave her the sort of look that told her exactly what he thought about that argument; Penelo just shrugged him and his arm off. "Well, I'm not, and even though I'm not, of course you'd be biased. You're my friend; you're supposed to think I'm all that and a corral of chocobos, even though I'm not. And of course Larsa's biased too; he had the shittiest childhood I've ever heard of and his brains were scrambled every since and that's why he thinks I'm the best thing since pre-sliced toast. And of course I'm biased; I fucking _love_ him, I _want_ to be with him, I _want_ to be good enough for him. It's just--"

"It's just," Vaan interrupted, "that you're an idiot that loves to take things for granted."

If Penelo had been acting normally, this was about when she'd probably wallop him on the back of his head for impinging on her piratical honor. Instead, she just laughed-- a dry, sad sob of a sound. "Probably. God knows that I've been taking us being happy together in the end for granted, after all."

"That's not what I meant," Vaan said again, even more stubbornly than before.

"No," she said quietly. "I know that. But it's probably true anyway. Because I always took us being happy together after a bit for granted. Because I love him. And he loves me. And he's such a dreamer and he's also a damn schemer and he thinks that if he fights hard enough to win me over, if he can just get us up to a goddamn alter, we'll be fine. Because he's just… him. He's just Larsa. And he doesn't… he can't understand… he doesn't want to think…"

She took a deep breath in that way that always meant business, that meant that she was making up her fool mind about something. "Because he doesn't want to think that what'll come after. Because he thinks that being married is like living in a never-ending honeymoon and we'll always be happy after we finally get the chance to tie the knot. Because he thinks its worth giving up almost anything to get the chance to make me a real lady and marry me and that scares me so goddamn much."

She looked up and the look in her eyes could have broken a lesser man's heart.

"Because he thinks that I'm worth almost anything in the world and I'm not, Vaan. I'm just not."

The sound of his palm whacking the back of her head turned out to be a surprisingly satisfying one.

"You are," he said, when she had finally stopping rubbing the back of her head and shooting him glares that promised him a slow and painful death. "You are if you and him think you are. And if you want this and he wants this and he can figure out a way to get this… well, why the hell _not_?"

And she sighed and she laughed and she made all those odd Penelo noises that he knew he'd miss in the future, when she wasn't just his partner anymore but something far better, something that belonged to a world outside his one.

"You ass. That hurt. And that isn't… it's not…"

He whacked her again to get her to keep talking, only marginally more gently this time around. She gave another sad sob-laugh and punched him even harder on his shoulder in a way that'd leave some damn interesting bruises in the morning and went on.

"It's just… it's just, I love him and I want him and sometimes I need him so much that it… it hurts when I can't have him, when I can't stay the night or touch him in public or come up with a way to see things through. It hurts when I'm with him and when I don't get to see him or I have to watch half of the royal tarts in Ivalice try to find a way into his trousers. And he drives me crazy sometimes when he nags me, when he tries to get me to stay with him and not do the things I have to, when he's so needy and he's so grabby and he looks at me like he thinks I'll disappear if I so much as go a day without sending him a letter to let him know I'm alright. And he snores in bed and he elbows me when he sleeps and I love him so much it's really kind of stupid and I don't even know why or how."

If she was crying right now, she was hiding it well. All he could see of her was her hair in front of her face and her hands in front of her hair and her knees curled up in from of her hands, as though she was trying to shield herself from everything she could.

"And he wants to marry me and I love him, I love him like crazy, and I just don't know what to do. Because he's willing to do almost anything and he's so brilliant and so lovely and I want to change the world with him, I want to live with him and die with him and _everything_ with him, everything, anything and all the way through. But I'm so goddamn ordinary and every day I'm with him, I can't stop thinking he'll just eventually realize that he could do better and tell me that it's all a mistake and he found somebody better and I was an idiot to ever think he'd settle for someone like me. He needs something I'm not and I just don't know how to be what he needs me to be before he figures all of that out."

And all Vaan could do was look and look and look at her and realize that however much he'd miss her, he wouldn't miss how goddamn annoying she could be about denying everything in her life that should be so easy, that should be done without even blinking, without letting something like worry bog her down.

"I always knew you could be slow sometimes," Vaan said finally. "Especially when it came to anything below the belt. But I never thought you were as much a _bleeding idiot_ like you're being now and if that's the sort of way you're going to think, maybe you're right about being a crazy fool after all."

Penelo's mouth all but audibly _dropped_. But before she could set that razor tongue of hers off on him again, Vaan rushed in, trying to make her understand, trying to realize just what she had and what she had the chance to do.

"Because he _loves_ you, you idiot, and after knowing you for six years, don't you think he knows just who you are almost better than you do? Don't you think he's figured out what you're like and why you're like it and the sort of crazy ass things you naturally seem to be attracted to? Do you honestly think anyone who's ever loved you could ever do that sort of thing to you?"

When she looked up at last, there are tears in her eyes and a snarl on her mouth and she had never looked so crazy or so ferocious or so beautiful. "And just who _am_ I, Vaan? Some gutter girl who clawed her way up the streets before? Some stupid tramp that actually thinks she can marry an emperor? Some low-class sky pirate that's not a part of his world?"

"You total nit-wit," Vaan said, and he had never loved her or wanted to strangle her more. "You're the best thing that's happened to either me or him and you're just the sort of thing his crazy ass needs the most to keep from going over the edge and doing just the sorts of things his brothers would do. And you're wonderful and you're magical and you're terrifying and pretty goddamn adorable and you're the farthest thing from ordinary I've ever met and if you don't recognize that, I might have to kick your ass until you do."

Impossibly, she managed to laugh at that, fingers tangling through her fair hair in knots. "Oh please, Vaan. Like I'd ever let you."

"If I paralyzed you first, I could probably get away with it. But that's not the point. The point is..." And he had to take a breath before he said this, because he didn't know if he'd ever been this honest with her, this real, this true. "The point is that you're the biggest idiot I've ever met if you don't know just how lucky you are right now to love someone that much and have him love you back and have the rest of your life just up front and how goddamn jealous I'm trying not to be of you two."

"Oh God, Vaan," she said, and there were tears running down her cheeks again and her make-up smearing all over her face, until she looked vaguely black and blue. "Do you mean that, really? Do you?"

He leaned against her, buried his face in her shoulder, felt her do the same for him. "Hell yeah. I didn't mean the love of _my_ life when I was just a punk kid from Rabanastre, being kidnapped by a couple of scary-ass bangaa bounty hunters. Do you know just how fucking lucky you are to have that whole mess just work out?"

She sniffed into him for a bit, hands gripping his shirt the way she always used to when she was young and she was scared and they seemed all alone in the rest of the world, with nobody else to cling to. And she was Penelo, his best friend, and the Dread Piratess, his partner, and Penny, the girl down the block with ragged braids and scary older brothers, the one who put frogs in his bed when he misbehaved and who had an undying crush on his brother and whose parents who took him in when he had no where else to go. And she was here and it had always been so easy and so simple to be with her and he loved her and he knew that maybe, just maybe, they both finally knew just what they had to do.

"No," she finally said, "but you were there to let him in on just who to rescue. And when me and Larsa finally figure this all out, you'll be in on it too. You're gonna have to stand up for me in my wedding and be godfather to all of our flippy haired babies and beat any crazy out of them too. You'll be at my engagement and you'll be at my child bed and you better even be at my goddamn _funeral_ if I go ahead of you."

And he wrapped his arms around her and thought that maybe, even after she was gone from his ship, she didn't need to leave his entire life after all.

"Wouldn't miss any of it for the world," Vaan said, and felt his mouth curve into a smile. "I mean, as long as you don't keep trying to invite me to some threesomes during all of those things which is just… god, Pen, that's just gross. I think I'd rather roll around in bed with Old Dalan and Migelo than you two loons."

"Fine then," Penelo mumbled into his chest. He could almost feel her own grin against his bare skin. "Have it your way. Besides, judging from what all your viera have to say during their mornings after, Larsa would probably end up being much too much woman for you anyhow."

* * *

There were a lot of things Vaan had been wrong about in his entire life. There were so many, in fact, that had he lost count right around the time he turned eighteen and it turned out that even if he had managed to become a sky pirate, it'd turn out to be a lot harder than he had ever thought it'd be and he needed a partner far more than even he had figured. But as far as he was concerned, even if he did sometimes have a tendency to miss the small details, he had always been great at seeing the big picture.

After all, he had always knew he'd someday be a sky pirate someday, even if the path to getting there was longer, stranger and scarier than he'd dreamed of ahead of time. He had always known that someday his thieving tendencies would lead to bigger and better things for him, even if he hadn't foreseen the sexy sky pirates and improbably innocent knights and homicidal princess in his immediate future. He had always known that the pain in the ass little girl that he'd lived with him for a good chunk of his life and had stuck with him through thick and thin would end up being something great, even if she had refused to believe him ahead of time.

And in the end, he had been right about this as well. But even he knew that it wouldn't be hard to predict that Penelo would make for the most radiant and most humid bride he had ever met. And when she finally stood in front of Vaan with flowers in her hands and a veil trailing around her hair and a trembling smile on her face, all Vaan could do was touch the edges of her eyes with his thumbs and smear her elaborate make-up and brush her tears away so she was just a little less bleary on her wedding day.

Not that it mattered anyway. When the Dread Empress Sugar Thighs needed to, she could outshine anyone else around.

"Ready?" he asked one last time, for the very last mission the Dread Pirate Ratsbane would ever carry out with his best friend, pirating partner and general evil twin.

"Ready," she said, at his side for the last time as he had always known she would be. "And really, when _wouldn't _I be?"

"Never," he said, and held one gallant hand out to escort her down to her groom. "And that's why you're gonna go and surprise the hell out of _everyone_ who thinks you're not going to be able to pull this off."

"But not you?" she asked, and her tears were sliding into her smile again and her eyes were bright, so wet but so bright. "You always believed in me, right?"

"You were," he muttered, "always too annoying to let me get away with doing otherwise."

And then they stepped out to let the world see the last adventure that they would ever embark on together, side by side by side.


End file.
